Blender vs. Silo
Original version by Boder 2005-12-20, with Silo 1.42 and Blender 2.40. Article may need to be updated as Silo 2 was released in August 2007. More Than Just An Application At a Glance I hesitated to bestow the term "versus" to the title of this little article , the reason being that these two applications are developed for two different audiences. Silo is $159, Blender is free. Silo is developed as a focused, light, fast, and customizable modeling tool that can easily integrate into any professional's workflow. Blender is developed as a complete and open source 3D solution for modeling, texturing, rigging, animating, and rendering. Therefore this article should be taken as a comparison of the modeling portion for both applications. And remember that the author is new to modeling and not the most talented artist. Now let's get to the nitty gritty. Websites and Communities Both websites serve fixed-width offerings with consistent color schemes. Blender's website and especially its community are massive in comparison. The Silo forums appear to be very helpful nonetheless. The Silo site has a much more professional push featuring buzzwords, quotes by artists, and hype. Nevercenter, the creators of Silo, often use "workflow", "speed", and "advanced" when talking about their product. Blender focuses on its resources, documentation, and galleries of artwork, while Silo is building itself up in this area. Silo has a surprising number of good tutorials. Blender has a lot to cover because it is complicated and rapidly changing, so you might stumble across outdated material. Help and Documentation Silo's documentation is pretty hip. It comes with comprehensive compiled HTML (.chm) pages, which can be easily searched. The help strictly follows the menu layouts, but since they are logical, it makes sense. The website has all the recent tutorials, which are very well done, in one spot. Blender, being a complete package, has a lot more documentation. The documentation can be found in the Wiki (which is periodically mirrored at http://download.blender.org/documentation/htmlI/) and the Wikibook "Blender 3D: Noob to Pro." The Wiki also contains a reference. There are also many tutorials scattered across the web and on Elysiun (elysiun.com), some of which are linked in the Wiki's tutorial list. Sometimes you will come across outdated information because Blender is open source and constantly evolving. Scripting Blender has many, many plugins available to expand its functionality. Python can be used to script plugins relatively easily. DLLs can be compiled to plugin to the sequence editor. Silo has quite a few plugins on their forums and users are free to download the plugin SDK. The SDK can be used to write plugins in C with DevC . Getting Around Selection Modes Both offer the selection of vertices, edges, faces, and objects. In Silo these correspond to the keys A,S,D,F for quickly changing modes. Blender has an Object Mode and Edit Mode, toggled with TAB. In Edit Mode, CTRL TAB brings up a menu to select vertices, edges, or faces. Silo offers faster switching and also the editing of two objects at the same time, which isn't terribly important as Blender can easily join meshes, separate parts of a mesh, and select linked vertices. Drawing Modes Both offer wireframe, solid, and shaded views. Blender also has a bounding box mode. Silo has a "fast shaded" and a ghost view mode. Cycle through the modes in Silo with NUMPAD 0. In Blender use Z, SHIFT-Z, and ALT-Z to change between the modes. Blender allows faster switching. Camera Modes Blender starts out in Orthographic Mode, Silo in Perspective Mode. Each uses the NUMPAD to switch views, but Silo locks the orthographic views which is sort of annoying. You have to select the "Free Orthographic" mode to move around. Hotkeys Both have great hotkey setups. Silo gets its advantage from its complete customizability. You can change the whole feel of Silo with different hotkeys, buttons, mouse clicks, color options, and display options. Blender, for its part, can also have its colors completely changed around and its buttons moved around, but not to the same extent. Also note that hotkey customization isn't available yet in Blender. Selection Both have more selection options than you can shake a salami at! Select Linked (in Blender) is the same as Expand Selection (in Silo). Both allow you to select more and less (grow and shrink). Select all, select none, select triangles, select quads, select N-gons/F-gons, border select, and invert selection. The paint-style select in Blender is a tiny bit more inconvenient to activate but it is more powerful when activated, allowing to you specify a brush size. The border select is the same in both, but Silo makes it a little easier to switch between "Limiting the Selection to Visible" or not. Specific to Blender are "Random Select" and "Lasso Select" and "Select Non-manifold." Silo, for its part, has a very nice temporary selection mode as you move over points/faces/vertices they are temporarily highlighted and if nothing else is selected you can quickly use various tools on the temporary selection. This makes for lightning quick "tweaking" and editing of meshes. Basic Modeling Transform Widget/Manipulator The widget looks very similar. It is essential to using Silo, but optional in Blender. However, Silo can be configured to rely less on the widget. The widget can perform Translation, Scaling, or Rotation. The widget can be oriented to World Coordinates, Object Coordinates, or according to the normal. Silo also offers an unobtrusive alternate widget that resides in the bottom-left corner of the screen. In Blender you can use G, R, and S to Grab, Rotate, and Scale respectively, but in Silo it looks like you have to change the widget and then use CTRL Mouse Button to "tweak" the move, rotate or scale. Both have easy hotkeys for extrude (E in Blender and Z in Silo). Note that Silo has an extra Snapping Mode where you can force the selection to "hug" another mesh, only moving along the surface of that mesh. Blender offers an enormous amount of power in being able to Scale and Rotate around various points (cursor, object center), but Silo seems more limited. Okay, I figured out that transformations take place relative to the widget (using the widget like the cursor in Blender). You have to re-position/re-orient the widget by hand. Silo doesn't have the power to set the widget to certain desired locations quickly. You can translate and rotate about the plane parallel to the screen in both. In Silo, switch to the correct widget, make your selection and hold down CTRL while dragging the mouse. In Blender make your selection then push either R (to rotate) or G (to translate) and move the mouse, then press the left mouse button to confirm. Both programs make it easy to transform the selection along the XY, YZ, or XZ planes. Simply push SHIFT and the axis to want to disregard (X,Y,Z) in Blender and simply set the hotkey "Constrain to __ Plane" in Silo. Snapping/Precision Editing Both allow snapping to grid lines. Only Blender allows precise editing. Snapping is turned on in Silo with ALT SHIFT A. In Blender, simply hold CTRL while performing a transform to start snapping and release to exit snapping mode. It is easier in Blender and also more control is encouraged for snapping (the default Blender grid is 60x60, Silo is 24x24). Holding SHIFT in Blender allows you to make small, minute changes. Blender displays a number when performing any transform, showing the amount moved, rotated, or scaled. You can enter a specific number by pressing the N key. Furthermore, you can change the size of the "grid" that is snapped to by holding down CTRL SHIFT. Silo does not give you a number, except for rotation, and leaves it to your eye. The numbers for position and size are given in the numerical editor, but the delta is not, making it much less useful. Lights and Materials and Groups and Hiding Silo offers groups that are adequate in comparison to Blender. Silo has basic colored materials with diffuse, specular, ambient, and emissive. It even allows you to load an image. Blender has much more (UV mapping, procedural textures, bumpmapping, stencil mapping, alpha mapping, etc). Silo doesn't have UV mapping, but it looks like powerful UV tools will be added in version 2. Blender recently got "live" LCSM UV unwrapping. Silo offers basic point lights, directional lights, and spot lights with customizable attributes. Blender offers more lights and more customization. You can plug renderers into Silo to show off your models better, but you will probably be inclined to import them into a different package and render them properly. Normals You can draw the normals in both, change their size, flip them, and make them point outwards. Reverse Normals = Flip Normals. Unify Normals = Recalculate Normals Outside. Mirroring It is easy to duplicate, create an instance, and mirror in each program. Silo has a "mirror instance" option to model one side of a symmetrical object and see the changes on the other side. In the new Blender, you can use a mirror modifier that works in the same way and not only features the snapping to the seam like Silo, but also features clipping and automatic removal of doubles when the mirror copy is made real!! Advanced Editing Proportional Editing Silo is on left, in orange. This effect is called "soft selection" in Silo. Silo uses a method that involves a radius of effect and a strength modifier. You can change the radius with the mouse wheel and the strength with CTRL the mouse wheel. Blender also uses the mouse wheel to change the radius of effect and SHIFT-O to change the shape. You can see pictures 1, 4, and 6 are close to identical. Blender offers more shapes, Silo offers more control. Subdivision This is called Subsurfacing in Blender. Both allow as many subdivision levels as you want, but suggest no more than fifth or sixth level subdivision. Silo requires you to change the options to go above five, Blender requires you to stack Sub-D modifiers. You do know that at 7-level Subdivision each face becomes 16,384 faces? There is a greater focus on subdivision in Silo as you can easily increase or decrease the subdivision level with C and V. Silo also allows partial subdivision, while Blender does not. This allows you to add more geometry and/or smooth part of your mesh without having to go to the trouble of making it a separate mesh. But Blender allows you to crease your edges on a scale from 0.0 to 1.0, while Silo just allows creased or uncreased (a binary 0 or 1). Face/Edge Loop Tools and N-gons Both have nice Edge Loop, Face Loop, and Edge Ring Selects. You can fake a Vertex Loop select in Blender but not Silo. N-gons are polygons with 5 or more edges. It is debatable whether N-gons are good or bad, but Silo supports them. Blender has something called F-gons, which are basically N-gons without any of the benefits. Both have nice splitting tools, cutting tools, deleting tools, and sliding tools. Other Advanced Tools NURBS, Bezier Curves, and Metaballs Silo is lacking in this area. Blender has nice tools for NURBS, Bezier Curves, and Meta Objects. Silo implements "curves" as a series of line segments, but otherwise lacks those modeling tools. Dupliverts/Dupliframes Silo has something called array that lacks the control and power of Blender. An object is duplicated for every vertex on another object. Blender allows you to change the orientation, but Silo does not. Silo = no curves = no dupliframes. Sculpting Blender has a rapidly changing "sculpt mesh" script to mold your model like clay. Silo will be adding "displacement painting" in version 2. Lathe Object and Similar Tools Blender has nifty tools like Spin, Screw, To-Sphere, Warp, and BevOb which dwarf Silo's Lathe Object, Extrusion Object, and Path Extrusion Object. Actually, that is not entirely true, because Silo's "Lathe" is comparable to Blender's "Spin." The Path Extrusion Object is limiting because of Silo's lack of curves. And the other functionality mentioned is missing altogether. Topology Brush Silo has this innovative tool that allows you to draw lines on a mesh and create a wireframe from your lines and the topology of the mesh. You have to see it in action! Inset Scale Blender does not have an inset scale tool. It works in a similar fashion to a normal scale, except all edges are moved the same distance. I didn't know what it was at first so here are some pictures, with a comparison to a scale along the normal. Inset is on the left. Bevel It is very strange how the built-in bevel works in Blender. The Python Script works how you would expect it, but it is harder to acess and not as easy to control as the built-in bevel for Silo. Booleans Both have nice boolean operations. Intersect, Union, and Difference. Blender also has the python script Megabool. The Bottom Line You might use Silo for: * Complete Interface Customization * Complete Hotkey Customization * Tweak Mode * Focus On Transform Widgets * More Efficient Changing of Selection Modes * Quick Changing of SubDivision Levels and Partial SubDivision * Tools like Inset, Shell, Topology Brush, and the Snapping Manipulator * N-gons * You Might Find it Faster for Certain Types of Modeling You might use Blender for: * Integration with a Complete 3D Solution * Better Snapping for Precise and Technical Modeling * Powerful Rotation/Scaling Around the Cursor * Focus on Hotkeys * Support for Other Modeling Tools (Curves, NURBS, Meta Objects) * Tools like "To Sphere", Spin, Warp, BevOb, and a better Duplivert * SubDivision with Nice Creasing Abilities * Price * Community and Free Resources and Plugins I hope you found this read enjoyable and informative. Feedback is welcome. Thanks to BeBraw, Sonic TH, and slikdigit for their comments. Screencap was used for the screenshots in this article. Category:Article Category:Modelling Category:Art